The Symptoms of New EG.5.1 Variant, New Yorkers Take Precautions As Cases Rise, and Today’s Headlines

Mirror Lake in the Adirondacks in New York State. Cases and hospitalizations there are on the rise.
Good morning. This is Jonathan Spira reporting. Here now the news of the pandemic from across the globe on the 1,244th day of the pandemic.
OP-ED ON MONDAY
Zooming Back to the Office
Without even a hint of irony, Zoom Video Communications has told its employees to return to the office for the first time since the start of the pandemic.
The video communications tool saw a boom during the dramatic shift to remote work revolution amidst the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
While the company’s stock skyrocketed at the start of the pandemic, it has taken a nose dive since employees started trickling back to the office, even though many work on hybrid schedules and some are refusing to return at all.  Still, fewer people need video conferencing than during the months of pandemic lockdowns.
At the start of 2022, Zoom said that only 2% of its workforce worked in its offices. The company, which employs more than 8,400 people worldwide, has two U.S. offices  – one in San Jose, California, and one in Denver, Colorado –  as well as several international locations.
The company isn’t forcing its entire workforce, however, to come back and isn’t asking anyone to work in an office on a full-time basis.  One must imagine that Zoom still wants employees to have an excuse to use its videoconferencing tool for internal meetings as has been early 2020.
Rather, the company is asking workers who are within 50 miles (80 km) of an office to come in for at least two days a week.
It’s important to note that many remote employees across multiple industries  would – to borrow a slogan from the rather successful American Tobacco Company marketing campaign for Tareyton cigarettes (“Us Tareyton smokers would rather fight than switch!”) –  rather fight than switch back to the office so it will be interesting to see how this plays out at Zoom.
Incidentally, the Tareyton slogan was the basis of an effort that was the company’s most visible advertising campaign in the 1960s and 1970s.  The slogan itself was created by the legendary adman James Jordan, who also created such slogans as “”Wisk beats ring around the collar,” and “Shaefer is the one beer to have when you’re having more than one.”
In other news we cover today, scientists have identified the primary symptoms of the new EG.5.1 subvariant and New York City and State are both urging people to take precautions as Covid cases continue to rise.
UNITED STATES
Symptoms of the new EG.5.1 variant are said to include a runny nose, headache, mild-to-severe fatigue, sneezing, and sore throat.
The new variant is spreading across the United Kingdom.  EG.5.1 is also descended from the omicron variant and already accounts for one in seven cases, accounting now for 14.6% of all new cases
Historically, what happens with respect to Covid in the United Kingdom generally will appear in the United States and elsewhere over a period of time.
Health officials in New York City and New York State are urging residents to take precautions against SARS-CoV-2 as cases rise in the Empire State.  There has been a noticeable uptick in hospitalizations across the state.
Data from August 2 shows hospital admissions rose by 22% compared to the previous week, with more than 100 people being admitted to hospitals each day statewide, the New York State Department of Health said in a news release.
Finally, only 11 states now track SARS-CoV-2 reinfections , a figure that is down from 18 earlier in the pandemic, according to the latest ABC News figures.  Tracking reinfections is crucial in order to gain an understanding of long-term complications from the virus as well as of the waning of antibodies from both coronavirus vaccines and infections..
GLOBAL
A new subvariant, known as EG.5.1, is spreading across the United Kingdom.  EG.5.1 is also descended from the omicron variant and already accounts for one in seven cases, accounting now for 14.6% of all new cases.
The new subvariant appears to be spreading quickly and could be one reason why there has been a recent rise in cases and hospitalizations there.
Meanwhile, experts in the United Kingdom believe the country is in the dark when it comes to what to expect from the pandemic this fall.  Most community-based tracking efforts have ended, although the UK Health Security Agency continues to track hospitalizations from Covid.  Absent new data on infections, the autumn wave could end up being more devastating than it has to be, many health experts in Britain believe.
OTHER HEALTHCARE NEWS
A cyberattack disrupted hospital computer systems and operations across the United States. The attack resulted in the closure of emergency rooms and primary care facilities as well as the postponement of many elective surgeries and outpatient appointments.
The attack began Thursday at hospitals and clinics  operated by Prospect Medical Holdings.  The company has facilities California, Texas, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania.
“Upon learning of this, we took our systems offline to protect them and launched an investigation with the help of third-party cybersecurity specialists,” Prospect Medical said in a statement. “While our investigation continues, we are focused on addressing the pressing needs of our patients as we work diligently to return to normal operations as quickly as possible.”
Leprosy, a disease with tremendous social stigma, may be endemic in Central Florida.  A new study describes the case of a 54-year-old man who was diagnosed with the illness but who had no known risk factors and had never traveled outside Florida.
The authors of the study, “Case Report of Leprosy in Central Florida, USA, 2022,” said that the state “has witnessed an increased incidence of leprosy cases lacking traditional risk factors. Those trends, in addition to decreasing diagnoses in foreign-born persons, contribute to rising evidence that leprosy has become endemic in the southeastern United States,” adding that “[T]ravel to Florida should be considered when conducting leprosy contact tracing in any state
In the 1980s, there were 5.2 million cases globally but they went down to fewer than 200 thousand by 2020.
Finally, watercress has been identified by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as the world’s healthiest vegetable.   The aquatic flowering plant is one of the oldest known leaf vegetables consumed by mankind and, along with its relatives such as radish and mustard, is noteworthy for having a piquant flavor..
TODAY’S STATISTICS
Now here are the daily statistics for Monday, August 7.
As of Monday morning, the world has recorded over 692.64 million Covid-19 cases, a figure up just under 0.03 million from the previous day, and 6.9 million deaths, according to Worldometer, a service that tracks such information. In addition, 664.87 million people worldwide have recovered from the virus, also a figure that is 0.05 million from the prior day.
The reader should note that infrequent reporting from some sources may appear as spikes in new case figures or death tolls.
Worldwide, the number of active coronavirus cases as of Monday at press time is 20,856,862, a decrease of 31,000. Out of that figure, 99.8%, or 20,819,686, are considered mild, and 0.2%, or 37,176, are listed as critical. The percentage of cases considered critical has not changed over the past eight months.
The test positivity rate for Covid for the week ending July 29 was  16.66%, up from 13.89% the prior week, according to data from the CDC Respiratory Virus Laboratory Emergency Department Network Surveillance, or RESP-LENS. By comparison, the test positive rate for influenza was 1.26%, down from 1.41%, and, for RSV, that figure was 0.99%, up from 0.66%.
The percentage of deaths due to Covid was 1% in the week ending July 29, 2023, a figure that is up 0.1% over the week.
Finally, the number of hospital admissions from Covid for seven days ending July 22 was 7,109, a figure that is up 10.3% over the preceding 30-day period.
As of March 25, 2023, the Morning News Brief began to update case data as well as death tolls on a weekly basis.  In addition, as of May 15, 2023, the Morning News Brief has pressed pause on certain data sets as we assess the update of changes in reporting by U.S. health authorities at the CDC.  Where appropriate, the Morning News Brief has reintroduced data sets are they have become available.
Since the start of the pandemic, the United States has, as of Monday, recorded 107.56 million cases, a higher figure than any other country, and a death toll of 1.17 million. India has the world’s second highest number of officially recorded cases, 45 million, and a reported death toll of 531,918.
The newest data from Russia’s Rosstat state statistics service showed that, at the end of July 2022, the number of Covid or Covid-related deaths since the start of the pandemic there in April 2020 is now 823,623, giving the country the world’s second highest pandemic-related death toll, behind the United States.  Rosstat last reported that 3,284 people died from the coronavirus or related causes in July 2022, down from 5,023 in June, 7,008 in May and 11,583 in April.
Meanwhile, France is the country with the third highest number of cases, with 40.14 million, and Germany is in the number four slot, with 38.43 million total cases.
Brazil, which has recorded the third highest number of deaths as a result of the virus, 704,794, has recorded 37.7 million cases, placing it in the number five slot.
The other five countries with total case figures over the 20 million mark are Japan, with 33.8 million cases, South Korea, with 33.2 million cases, placing it in the number seven slot, and Italy, with 25.9 million, as number eight, as well as the United Kingdom, with just over 24.6 million, and Russia, with 22.97 million.
VACCINATION SPOTLIGHT
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that, as of July 12, the total number of updated bivalent doses given in the United States was 144.2 million, an increase of 4 million doses over the past month.
Older – and no longer updated – data from the CDC shows that over 270.2 million people in the United States – or 81.4% – have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine as of May 11, 2023. Of that population, 69.5%, or 230.6 million people, have received two doses of vaccine, and the total number of doses that have been dispensed in the United States is now over 676.7 million. Breaking this down further, 92.23% of the population over the age of 18 – or 238.2 million people – has received at least a first inoculation and 79.1% of the same group – or 204.3 million people – is fully vaccinated.
Some 70.5% of the world population has received at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine by Monday, according to Our World in Data, an online scientific publication that tracks such information.  So far, 13.5 billion doses of the vaccine have been administered on a global basis and 31,213 doses are now administered each day.
Meanwhile, only 32.52% of people in low-income countries have received one dose, while in countries such as Canada, China, Denmark, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States, at least 75% of the population has received at least one dose of vaccine.
Only a handful of the world’s poorest countries – Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia and Nepal – have reached the 70% mark in vaccinations. Many countries, however, are under 20% and, in countries such as Haiti, Senegal, and Tanzania, for example, vaccination rates remain at or below 10%.
In addition, with the beginning of vaccinations in North Korea in late September, Eritrea remains the only country in the world that has not administered vaccines.
Paul Riegler contributed reporting to this story.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)